The Accidental Tourist

"Really? Am I right? Well, what do you know," Mr. Loomis said. "Look at this." He took hold of his own lapels, which sat so far in front of him that his arms seemed too short to reach them. "Gray suit," he told Macon.

"Just what you recommend. Appropriate for all occasions." He pointed to the bag at his feet. "See my luggage? Carry-on. Change of underwear, clean shirt, packet of detergent powder."

"Well, good," Macon said. This had never happened to him before.

"You're my hero!" Mr. Loomis told him. "You've improved my trips a hundred percent. You're the one who told me about those springy items that turn into clotheslines."

"Oh, well, you could have run across those in any drug store," Macon said.

"I've stopped relying on hotel laundries; I hardly need to venture into the streets anymore. I tell my wife, I say, you just ask her, I tell her often, I say, 'Going with the Accidental Tourist is like going in a capsule, a cocoon. Don't forget to pack my Accidental Tourist!' I tell her."

"Well, this is very nice to hear," Macon said.

"Times I've flown clear to Oregon and hardly knew I'd left Baltimore."

"Excellent."

There was a pause.

"Although," Macon said, "lately I've been wondering."

Mr. Loomis had to turn his entire body to look at him, like someone encased in a hooded parka.

"I mean," Macon said, "I've been out along the West Coast. Updating my U.S. edition. And of course I've covered the West Coast before, Los Angeles and all that; Lord, yes, I knew the place as a child; but this was the first I'd seen of San Francisco. My publisher wanted me to add it in. Have you been to San Francisco?"

"That's where we just now got on the plane," Mr. Loomis reminded him.

"San Francisco is certainly, um, beautiful," Macon said.

Mr. Loomis thought that over.

"Well, so is Baltimore too, of course," Macon said hastily. "Oh, no place on earth like Baltimore! But San Francisco, well, I mean it struck me as, I don't know . . ."

"I was born and raised in Baltimore, myself," Mr. Loomis said. "Wouldn't live anywhere else for the world."

"No, of course not," Macon said. "I just meant-"

"Couldn't pay me to leave it,"

"No, me either."

"You a Baltimore man?"

"Yes, certainly."

"No place like it."

"Certainly isn't," Macon said.

But a picture came to his mind of San Francisco floating on mist like the Emerald City, viewed from one of those streets so high and steep that you really could hang your head over and hear the wind blow.

He'd left Baltimore on a sleety day with ice coating the airport runways, and he hadn't been gone all that long; but when he returned it was spring. The sun was shining and the trees were tipped with green. It was still fairly cool but he drove with his windows down. The breeze smelled exactly like Vouvray-flowery, with a hint of mothballs underneath.

On Singleton Street, crocuses were poking through the hard squares of dirt in front of basement windows. Rugs and bedspreads flapped in backyards. A whole cache of babies had surfaced. They cruised imperiously in their strollers, propelled by their mothers or by pairs of grandmothers. Old people sat out on the sidewalk in beach chairs and wheelchairs, and groups of men stood about on corners, their hands in their pockets and their posture elaborately casual-the unemployed, Macon imagined, emerging from the darkened living rooms where they'd spent the winter watching TV. He caught snatches of their conversation:

"What's going down, man?"

"Nothing much."

"What you been up to?"

"Not a whole lot."

He parked in front of Muriel's house, where Dominick Saddler was working on Muriel's car. The hood was open and Dominick was deep in its innards; all Macon saw was his jeans and his gigantic, ragged sneakers, a band of bare flesh showing above his cowhide belt. On side of him stood the Butler twins, talking away a mile a minute. "So she says to us we're grounded-"

"Can't go out with no one till Friday-"

"Takes away our fake i.d.'s-"

"We march upstairs and slam our bedroom door, like, just a little slam to let her know what we think of her-"

"And up she comes with a screwdriver and takes our door off its hinges!"

"Hmm," Dominick said.

Macon rested his bag on the hood and peered down into the engine. "Car acting up again?" he asked.

The Butler twins said, "Hey there, Macon," and Dominick straightened and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. He was a dark, good-looking boy whose bulging muscles made Macon feel inadequate. "Damn thing keeps stalling out," he said.

"How'd Muriel get to work?"

"Had to take the bus."

Macon was hoping to hear she'd stayed home.